HURRICANE, Washington County — Washington County Sheriff Nate Brooksby says he was winding down for the evening on Sept. 11 when he got a phone call from a friend who is a retired deputy.
“I can tell his voice is kind of shaky, so my first thought is, ‘Who died? Who is he going to tell me that died?’ And then I couldn’t fathom what actually came out of his mouth.
“He said, ‘Hey, I know who Charlie Kirk’s shooter is. I know the family through religious association. … He’s in Washington County now and we’re working on trying to get him to come in voluntarily,'” Brooksby said.
On Wednesday, Brooksby addressed the media for the first time regarding his office’s involvement in the arrest of 22-year-old Tyler James Robinson. Robinson was charged on Tuesday in 4th District Court with aggravated murder, and Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty if Robinson is convicted.
Robinson is accused of killing Kirk in front of approximately 3,000 people at Utah Valley University. After investigators released a surveillance picture of the suspected gunman, Robinson’s parents feared their son was responsible, according to charging documents.
Robinson lived in an apartment in St. George. His parents’ home is in Washington City.
On Wednesday, Brooksby said Robinson’s parents talked him out of going to a remote area of Washington County, where he potentially was going to kill himself, and that they would help him surrender to authorities peacefully.
“Tyler knew it was just inevitable, with all the law enforcement pressure — his picture in the news, the gun on the news — he knew it was inevitable he would be caught. He was fearful of a SWAT team hit on his house, or he was fearful of being shot by law enforcement,” the sheriff said. “He was truly fearful of being shot by law enforcement.”
Because of that, Brooksby agreed to a low-key, peaceful arrest, and “that we would treat it as delicate and as soft as possible to make him feel comfortable, to where he would show up at my office. And that’s exactly what happened.”
By 9 p.m., Robinson’s parents and the retired sheriff’s deputy drove Robinson to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, where he was detained by deputies not in uniform. Brooksby said Robinson was not handcuffed, but rather taken to an interview room where he was given water and sat on a couch for a couple of hours until state and federal officers could arrive.
The sheriff described the conditions of Robison’s surrender as almost inviting.
“There was some criteria that needed to be met for him to surrender, and I agreed to those terms,” Brooksby said. “If, at the end of the day, we accomplish him surrendering peacefully on his own, I’m going to make some concessions to make that happen.”
He described Robinson as being somber, quiet and cooperative when he arrived at the sheriff’s office. Because the murder investigation was being handled by state and federal authorities, Brooksby said his detectives did not question Robinson.
“He’s accused of a horrific crime, but then we are treating him very civilly, very humanely, and that’s just part of the job; we do that on a regular basis,” he said.
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Brooksby said prior to receiving the call from his retired detective, his office had no idea the search for Kirk’s killer would end up in Washington County. And then he was shocked to learn the suspect is a “home-grown Washington County boy.”
“But then to have the suspect be a Utah resident who literally went to the same high school I went to (30 years apart) … it’s a double shock factor,” the sheriff said.
He also gave credit to the deputy who had built good relations in the community to the point that Robinson’s parents felt comfortable calling him and having him help negotiate their son’s surrender.
The sheriff on Wednesday also noted that people in the community who are named Robinson but have no relation to the suspected gunman or his family were receiving harassing phone calls. Because of that, he said Robinson’s parents and roommate will “need to lay low for a long time.”
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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